by Sean Croxton

Food addiction is the real deal.

To speak of a dependency on sugar in the same breath as cocaine and alcohol addiction seems a bit odd, but biologically they cannot be more similar.

The brain needs a fix.

The neurochemicals that are over-amplified and imbalanced by street drugs and booze are the very same ones that are triggered by sweets and other processed foods.

Some experts and addicts even say that food addiction can be harder to kick than a bad cocaine habit. Scoring some coke requires a dealer. Cookies, donuts, and bread are literally everywhere.

On this week’s episode of UW Radio, Dr. Vera Tarman, M.D. showed us just how real food addiction really is.

There’s a reason why so many of us just can’t so no to sugar, why we can’t stick to our diets no matter how hard we try, and why a great proportion of the 60,000 thoughts we have every day have to do with food.

There’s a good chance that these behaviors are all in your head.

Your brain, that is.

It’s been hijacked.

As I prepared for my broadcast with Dr. Tarman, I became familiar with a simplified version of how this hijacking takes place. Check it out…

There are three regions of the brain — the bottom, middle, and top.

Easy enough.

The bottom region — where the brain stem and cerebellum are — is responsible for life-sustaining activities such as breathing, the beating of the heart, and the digestion of food. This stuff happens automatically, which is why we don’t have to think about breathing every few seconds. Imagine how much that would suck.

To get an idea of how powerful and important this area is, just think about what happens when you hold your breath. At some point your brain overrides your commitment to turning blue by forcing you to give up and take a deep breath. Like I said, it’s responsible for life-sustaining activities. No air. No life.

The middle portion of the brain is known as the limbic system. This is where all of the emotional, instinctual, and motivational stuff takes place. It’s all about getting you to do the things that are going to keep you alive, like finding food for nourishment, sex for reproduction, and shelter for safety. It moves you away from pain and toward pleasure.

Lastly, we have the top of the brain, or the frontal lobe. Here is where our ability to think, rationalize, and reason comes from. It can look forward into the future and backward into the past. Our appreciations for art, community, family, and the many things we value are made possible by this particular region.

When these 3 areas are functioning properly, all is well. For example, the brain stem (bottom) may be ready to digest food. This activates the limbic system (middle) to look for food. Since the brain runs on sugar and consumes a high proportion of energy compared to the rest of the body, it wants an energy-dense meal with plenty of glucose. It is the reasoning ability of the frontal lobe (top) that keeps us from heading straight to the ice cream shop for dinner. It keeps the limbic system in check.

It’s like what we learned about government way back in grade school — there are 3 branches that have checks and balances to keep any one branch from getting all dictatorial.

Once these checks and balances go offline, things get out of control.

The biology of addiction works the same way. Once the neurochemicals — serotonin, dopamine, and endorphins — in the middle part of the brain become over-amplified and out of balance by way of alcohol abuse, drug use, or consumption of processed foods, it hijacks the frontal lobe’s ability to keep it in check.

In other words, that trip to the ice cream shop sounds like the best idea ever.

Waffle cone. Two scoops. Sprinkles, please.

That’s the super-simple, easy-peezy, no-frills version of addiction. To get the more in-depth, truth-bombing explanation, press the PLAY button below.

In this episode, Dr. Tarman covers the following topics and more:

* The best ways to get a natural serotonin high

* What dopamine has to do with why looking forward to the holidays is usually more exciting than the holiday itself

* How the medical definition of addiction has changed recently, even using the word “spiritual”, a word we seldom hear in medicine

* How long it takes for sugar cravings to go away

* Whether natural sugars and sweeteners are good substitutes for sugar addicts

* 10 questions that will give you some insight as to whether you are a food addict

* How dieting can be a gateway to drugs

* Why support is so critical to conquering food addiction

* Why Dr. Tarman believes complete abstinence from addictive foods is far more effective than moderation (WATCH the video below)

Be sure to visit Dr. Tarman’s website at www.addictionsunplugged.com.

UW Radio will be back next week with THREE shows!!!

See you tomorrow. Friday Fun Day is back!

Out.

Sean

by Sean Croxton & Jill Escher

If there is one thing I know for sure, it is that sugar can be one heck of a drug.

I’ve worked with clients who literally think about sugar all hours of the day.

They need it to function.

And when they go off of it, they suffer from a myriad of nasty withdrawal symptoms.

To me, that sounds pretty drug-like.

No, I don’t think that sugar is the root of all evil. Nor will I lie and tell you that I never touch the stuff. However, when your thoughts are consumed with committing a string of candy store robberies, things are probably getting out of control.

In fact, you may even be addicted to sugar and not even know it. Such was the case with Thursday’s UW Radio guest Jill Escher, author of Farewell, Club Perma-Chub! A Sugar Addict’s Guide to Easy Weight Loss.

Click the video below to learn more about how sugar addiction can be that devil on your shoulder — or as Jill called it “the gremlin in your head”.

Click HERE to listen to the full interview, as Jill shares her thoughts and experiences with overcoming sugar addiction once and for all. Such a great show!!

Learn more about Jill at www.jillescher.com.

Out!

Sean Croxton
Author, The Dark Side of Fat Loss

Fat makes me happy.

If you haven’t noticed, the low-fat era has not only coincided with a tremendous surge in obesity and diabetes, but also depression, anxiety, and addiction.

Seldom do we consider that the root cause of our mood issues is literally on our plates.

Or NOT on our plates.

On Monday, I blogged about the fact that 99.99% of our genes were formed before the Agricultural Revolution (just 10,000 years ago). Despite advancements in technology and our personal opinions regarding what we should be eating, we’re still genetically hardwired like hunter-gatherers.

We are hunter-gatherers.

Although we have no written or eyewitness accounts of the mental and emotional state of cavemen and women, we can look at the works of Weston A. Price and Vilhjalmur Stefansson, PhD to draw some conclusions as to the role of diet in mental health. In the case of Stefansson, a Canadian explorer and anthropologist, the Eskimos he studied and lived with were “the happiest people in the world”. Not only were they happy, but they were also extremely healthy, free of cancer, heart disease, and the diseases of civilization.

The Eskimo diet consisted of 80% animal fat. In fact, they warned Stefansson of the dangers of eating lean meat. They said it would make him sick, just as it making us sick.

I have long believed that in order to be healthy and happy, we must do as healthy and happy people do. Weston Price found that the native people he studied and lived with consumed ten times more fat-soluble vitamins and four times more minerals than we consume. These primitive people had no need for jails or mental institutions. Similar to Stefansson, Price consistently found that with adequate fats and nutrients came not only superior health, but also a pleasing, cheerful disposition.

We can learn a lot from “primitives”.

Regardless of how many self-help books we read, antidepressants we take, or talk therapy sessions we pay for, none will restore a nutritional deficiency.

According to last night’s UW Radio guest Pam Killeen, author of Addiction: The Hidden Epidemic,

“Approximately 60% of our brain is made up of fat. About 25% of the fat is the omega-3 fatty acid DHA, while 14% is the omega-6 fatty acid arachidonic acid (AA).”

The ideal food sources for these critical fats are wild fish, shellfish, grass-fed meat, lamb, goat, and pastured poultry and eggs. Yet, we prefer farmed fish, grain-fed cattle, the skin removed from our chicken, and the yolks out of our eggs. That is, if you eat animal foods at all.

We make grand attempts to keep our cholesterol levels down to save us from heart disease, yet we ignore the fact that “our brains make up 2% of our body’s weight and contains 25% of its cholesterol”. In fact, “myelin, which covers nerve axons to help conduct the electrical impulses that make movement, sensation, thinking, learning, and memory possible, is over 1/5 cholesterol by weight”. Cholesterol also increases neurotransmitter function five-fold and is needed for the proper functioning of serotonin (the happy neurotransmitter) receptors in the brain. Low cholesterol will not save you from heart disease and it will certainly have a negative impact on your mood and brain function.

I can go on and on about mineral deficiencies, specifically zinc, which is very low in plant foods, causing an imbalance with copper. An imbalanced zinc-to-copper ratio can cause fatigue, anxiety, hyperactivity and more. The best sources of zinc are red meat, organ meats (yum!), seafood, and oysters (I’m eating some right now).

Vitamin D, which is ONLY present in animal foods, is necessary for the conversion of the amino acid tryptophan into serotonin, as well as the conversion of tyrosine into dopamine and norepinephrine. Yes, you can get Vitamin D from the sun. But how many minutes have you spent in the sun today?

These are but a few of the nutrients that were abundant in the primitive’s diet and which are certainly lacking in our low-fat, high-carb fare. We have never in the history of the world consumed a diet this low in saturated fats, fat-soluble vitamins, and minerals. We’re paying the price for it, not only physically but mentally.

We do not have an antidepressant deficiency! Rather, many of us are deficient in the nutrients that build healthy brains and neurotransmitter function.

Like I always say, you can’t build a brick house out of wood.

Wood seems to be all we’re working with.

Depressing. Literally.

Source:

Sean Croxton
Currently Munching on Oysters!
http://www.undergroundwellness.com